Yin and Yang in Fiction and in Life

Conflict makes fiction interesting. Without stress there are but boring stories. Yin and Yang, Men and Women, Reason and Faith, Secular and Religious and on and on – apparently there is no end to the possibilities for creating powerful conflicted fiction – and real lives.

My primary source of conflict in fiction stems from reason and faith. Obviously this is not unique since throughout history many others have identified the same possibility. Recently, I read an article quoting Mathew Arnold’s analysis of the problem in which he – again almost certainly not uniquely – saw the roots of this conflict in Western Civilization deriving from Greek and Hebrew sources. He wrote the Greeks were guided by right thinking and the ancient Hebrews by right behavior - thought v. morality.

In our time in America, this conflict is playing out again and, rightly or wrongly, the Democrats have been singled out as champions of the secular and the Republicans as paladins of the religious. Sadly, Arnold saw this as a never ending battle between the two. When religion and demands for conformity and adherence to a morality based civic structure are pushed too far, the adherents of reason leap into the breach and beat back what they see as the forces of darkness. Sadly, the struggle seems always to go too far.

Similarly we see in the Muslim world today an even more powerful struggle between these forces is in flux with no winner guaranteed. For example, in Iran the struggle between the theocrats and secularists plays out dangerously before our eyes. Clearly, this is but one such conflict in the Central Civilization, and each of them has the potential to impact and even harm the rest of the world’s peoples

In writing two novels, I sought out such conflicts but was not nearly as conscious of the formality of the struggle as at this time as I am attempting manage such a battle in my latest book. Only in the last several years have have I become able to define the conflict in my own being.

Recently, I prepared a blog posting about Thoreau. Since first reading Walden more than fifty years ago, Transcendentalism has become a major element of my personal belief system, and in the last few years, I have tried to insert that outlook into my writing. Unfortunately, I’m neither a very good Transcendentalist nor much of a philosopher, so my level of understanding of the movement is limited, but, from what I gather, the men and women who developed the concept had an equally hard time agreeing among themselves.

Just as important to this posting, I have been influenced for a number of years by Existentialism. No big deal, except of course in my mind they are just about polar opposites. Thus as I and a number of my characters move confidently in the direction of our dreams, so do I and they recognize the abyss of nothingness.

Obviously, Transcendentalism is faith based – although it is far enough from mainstream Christianity to be roundly condemned by dogmatists as Godless. On the other hand Existentialism is clearly reason and secular in origin, although it’s clear that one can be both an Existentialist and a faithful Christian.

This posting seeks neither advice nor consolation. It simply highlights one more set of possible conflicts facing us as we experience the human condition. How is the dialectic of this conflict to be settled? Which is our thesis and which the antithesis? How can we come to our synthesis? My guess would be that both Thoreau and Sartre, perhaps the best exponent of modern Existentialism, would suggest that we live authentically. But that’s difficult in both life and fiction.

So as we living beings and our near and dear fictional characters struggle with yin and yang or Transcendentalism and Existentialism or any other opposites how are we to get to resolution? Not very easily I’d say, but that’s what makes life and fiction so interesting.